The Status of African-Americans was very pleased that Governor Culver signed HF 874 into law, which allowed the division to receive a $200,000 appropriation in State Fiscal Year 2008. This allocation enabled the division do some very important and innovative work with our flagship project called the Ongoing Covenant with Black Iowa (OCBI) Initiative across the state.

The Division was able to hire project coordinators around the state to organize the communities and address those significant issues for the OCBI initiative.The Project Coordinators were located in Davenport, Des Moines, Ft.Dodge, Burlington / Ft.Madison, and Waterloo.The coordinators received training on the purpose of the OCBI, their roles and responsibilities and reporting and other elements of the evaluation toolkit in the manual.

After meeting with the various task force groups in each of the communities, compiling all the pertinent information on the different issues, and comprising possible solutions for these issues.The project coordinators submitted the following recommendations: